Vachon Imagined

She walked toward the beautiful home she had built.

Every beam, every window, every stone bore the fingerprints of her own creation. It was the life she had longed for, the life she had labored to bring into being.

Then she felt it.

Not behind her.

Not before her.

Within her.

Low to the ground, almost imperceptible to the eye, something moved. She did not see it with her eyes but with her heart. Her body knew before her mind did.

A demon.

Where had it come from?

Nowhere.

Or perhaps, more truthfully, it had come through her.

Suddenly the house no longer mattered.

The years of work no longer mattered.

The beauty surrounding her disappeared into the background as this creature demanded her attention.

So she gave it none of her fear.

Instead, she gave it her presence.

“Ah,” she whispered.

“I see you.”

The world became very small.

There was only her…

and the demon circling.

She did not run.

She did not attack.

She did not pretend it wasn’t there.

Instead, she returned to God.

To that quiet courage that appears whenever we stop feeding fear. We notice it. We taste it. We feel it move through our bodies. But we do not kneel before it.

We stand.

Not in our own strength, but in the light that has always been shining beneath our fear.

The breath of God became the breath within her.

The courage of Christ became the courage upon which she stood.

Then something extraordinary happened.

The demon no longer circled within her.

It circled around her.

The space between them had returned.

She remained still.

She spoke no words.

She offered no resistance.

She simply stood.

The creature continued its slow circles, searching for something to consume.

But there was nothing left to feed upon.

Without fear…

it grew hungry.

Without resistance…

it grew weak.

Without belief…

it lost its appetite.

As it turned to leave, it began to change.

What had once crawled low to the ground, carrying the weight of terror, slowly transformed before her eyes. Its form softened. Its power dissolved. It walked away no longer as the thing it had been, but as something emptied of the life she had once unknowingly given it.

She knew she had not accomplished this by herself.

She had simply remained standing.

The One who stood within her had done the rest.

And so she turned once more toward the home she had built.

Toward the family waiting inside.

Toward the life that had never disappeared, only been momentarily hidden by fear.

She crossed the threshold.

She rested.

And she never again returned to tell the old story.

Because once fear loses its appetite…

there is nothing left to remember.